Tourist Trap

Drip… Drip…

Deimos suddenly jerks awake, fully clothed in a grungy bathtub full of cold water with some floating ice cubes, wings extended in shock which causes a huge crash of toiletries off the disgusting linoleum shelf and onto the floor with a clatter. It takes a few groans and a minute of the half-dragon holding his aching head before realizing he was in a bathtub full of ice in a forgein country. After lifting his wings to check himself, he arrives to the conclusion that he did still have two functioning kidneys.

After hauling himself out of the frigid tub, he strips his soaked clothes off, managing to raise his body temperature enough to clear a bit of the grogginess being cold brought. However, this lifted the veil to an underlying blinding headache that was hiding under the lul. It was in the process of looking for some tylenol, he realizes this was not the hotel room his parents had rented for their vacation. In fact Deimos had absolutely no idea where he was and finding his phone had been in his pants pocket, he now had no way of finding out.

Pulling a towel around himself, the half-dragon steps into the living room, finding the carpet soaking wet and the reek of cheap beer assaulted his nostrils. The place was an absolute mess, both hotel beds pushed up against the wall sideways and the furniture half-heartedly stacked in the corner, some playing cards tossed around the room and a bottle of tylenol nicely laid on the floor with a tall glass of water.

So there really was a god… a cruel one it seems because upon opening the bottle, Deimos discovers the pills inside were not tylenol… They were MDMA. He decides he should at least drink the water. This leads to Deimos spewing straight vodka across the floor and hacking.

This sucks.

Last Deimos remembered his parents had asked him to accompany their friend’s kids out for a night on the town, just to keep an eye out for him.  Last thing he remembered was being handed a tea in one of the cafes by one of the teenagers he was supposed to be watching. Tarro tea didn’t tend to end like this, so what gives? And where were his friends?

Deimos shakes his head, getting his priorities together. He wrings his clothes out into the tub, laying them out into a dry spot in the living room carpet, pulling the hair drier there with him. He turns on the T.V for some background noise as he takes on the tedious task of drying his pants off with a cheap hotel hair dryer. Such a wonderful vacation. Go to asia, his parents said. It’ll be fun, they said. Go with a bunch of spoiled American teenagers to keep them out of trouble, they’ll totally respect you, they said.

Just as Deimos moves to pull his now dry pants on, a news flash catches his attention.

“Tourists and civilians are advised to stay inside. The military has intervened and is currently arresting corrupt government officials and agents.” Deimos feels his heart drop into his stomach as pictures of politicians flash across the screen with phone numbers of who to call if seen. The videos being played of these ‘arrests’ looked more like executions. Hell half the footage was just of civilians being terrorized by military goons.

Great. He was lost in a foreign country in the middle of a hostile coup. Ain’t that his luck. He needed to find his parents before they got hurt in all this, and then he needed to find the kids he was supposed to be babysitting. He goes to try to move the furniture from in front of the balcony door, but find it too tightly wedged. He’d have to take the stairs.

However just as luck would have it, he opens the door to a panicked man in a suit, a woman in a nice dress, holding a baby. They were desperately trying to get a key card to work on the door, without much luck. Great, he’d just come face to face with a wanted minister and his family. Deimos audibly sighs, shaking his head and cursing whatever horrible act he’d done to deserve this karma. “Get in.” He offers, holding the door open to the man in his family, looking down the hallway to ensure that no one was coming.

This had gone bad, real fast. The only option he had was to trust that his parents could keep a low profile and that the teenage goons he was supposed to be watching had at least two brain cells that weren’t stoned out of their gourd.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any Tylenol, would you?” He asks the minister, shaking his head at his own dumb luck.

DEIMOS’S ROOM

The Minister let out a sigh of relief, as he bent down to massage his knees. His age had caught up to him, and running up a flight of stairs already caused him some discomfort.

His wife, a slightly younger woman, whirrled around to their rescuer. “Tylenol? Yes, of course, I think I have some in the medicine bag.” She passed her infant daughter to the minister.

“Thank you stranger, but I’m afraid we’ve just put you in danger.” The minister took out his mobile phone and opened a special app. From afar it looked like a delivery tracker on the map. “…This isn’t a time for food delivery!” His wife scolded him, the anxiety of the situation made her say something irrational. She switched the topic, realizing how upset she was.  “Will the president be alright? They went after her first.”

“She’s still the sister of the top brass. He will not kill her. Murdering family is an ancient taboo. Besides, it will only make her a martyr, no, the generals must discredit her first. I’m afraid I can’t say the same of the others.” The minister explained.

A younger woman in a straw hat and carrying a sheathed blade burst into the room. The minster looked over and embraced the girl, given she was his daughter. “Ranah, thank god you’re alive!” He said, relieved. “Dad? The military is coming to this hotel. They know we’re here. I… I don’t think I can hold them off.” She explained, still heavily breathing from running towards this room.

“Don’t worry. A friend is coming to help us.” He showed them the app, which again, was misunderstood at first. “…You ordered food?” Ranah looked at the blip, a bit confused, seeing a red dot at their location. She then turned to the presumed “…Oh, and thank you for I am Ranah, the River Sage. I am a superhero of this country. Please, stand behind me. I will do what i can to protect you.”

The minister sighed. Why did the emergency app look like a food delivery tracker? A beep notified him of a message. “I’ll be down there in am minute. - DG.”

HOTEL LOBBY

The military arrived with their usual aggressive stance, barging into the lobby en masse. The staff, unable or unwilling to resist, bowed their heads and kept bowing, as the soldiers ran past them. An officer in battle gear, judging from his beret and advanced age, “Where is the Minister of Foreign Affairs?” he shot the question at the busboy at the door.

“He is… not here. Sorry. You are at wrong hotel.” The busboy said, daring to stand up to him even with just a white lie.

The officer was not impressed. He grabbed the young man by his collar. “Liar! We know he is here. His position was reported to us.”

“No… no! I swear!” The young man protested, now very afraid but knowing what would happen if he gave up the minister.

The officer called two soldiers over. “He is a rebel! Bring him outside! Call the military court! And ready the 06 Unit!” HE said. The soldiers comply and drag the bellboy- all of them barely into their twenties. They drag him and several other staff outside towards the hotel’s garden, where they had already set up desks… and a wall to line up people for firing squad.

DEIMOS’s ROOM
“They’re coming.” Ranah drew her funky, wavy sword and began chanting. An abjuration spell, Deimos would probably recognize as protection from projectiles.

“Open this door or we will!” The soldiers began banging on Deimos’s door. The Minister put her family in the corner determined to shield them with his body if need be. “…stupid misguided children.” He murmured, knowing how young most of these soldiers were.

((650))

Thank god, she has pain pills.

“It’s alright. I’m sure I was probably in danger anyway by the looks of it.” The boy nods to the Tv screen of people being hassled by law enforcement for seemingly nothing. “May as well be of some help while I’m here.” Deimos shrugs, pouring himself a small glass of water in the kitchenette. “I’ll be honest. This day was alright a little wild before this even started.” He laughs as he gladly accepts the pain pills for his throbbing head.

All Deimos can do is listen, not necessarily knowing the government of this country. As far as he knew, most, if not all the politicians in this country were in grave danger. Only problem is he didn’t know the names or locations of these people or if he could even help them out too. He didn’t even know where exactly he was. At the very least it seemed their president wouldn’t be out right killed, so that was a bonus. And who the hell orders food at a time like this? Whatever, maybe they could have some noodles while they waited this out.

Deimos just about jumped out of his skin as the door burst open, his wings spread in alarm. The stars along the inside membranes of his wings flare to life as a brilliant sky of foggy greens, purples and blues. However as it only seemed to be one woman who was now hugging the minister, they slowly sank as the perceived danger passed. So the minister’s daughter was a superhero? Interesting.

“I’m Deimos. I’m not a superhero, I’m just a tourist. But, I can at least help out here.” The military was coming, that’d mean fire power. As much as he’d love to have his scales against bullets, he didn’t really have to room to fight as a full dragon in here. Heck, he’d probably take the floor out from under him if he tried. He glances out the window to see if perhaps an escape could be an option if he had some help moving the furniture away from the balcony, but with that much air control through helicopters and jets, there was no way he’d escape with all four of these people alive. That only really left his spells, which could be useful assuming Ranah knew how to use that sword.

“Ranah, they know you’re here, but they don’t know anything about me. I’m going to try to give you an advantage. If this works they should be blind when they open that door.”

Deimos takes a side step, wings spreading to cover more space as he moves to stand beside Ranah, to which way the door would open up to. He takes notice of the spell Ranah was preparing, noting it was very similar to his shield spell, just a bit more specifically useful against rapid fire weapons. He made a mental note to try to learn that one for himself later. “Don’t look directly at this.” Deimos warns in general, glancing back to the minister in a small prayer this goes according to plan.

As the noise of calamity echoes from downstairs the skin on his wings begins to glow alight, starting at his wingtips, more stars glowing from dull, to glimmering to absolutely radiant. Even his eyes shimmered with draconic fury ready to blind and burn the second the door was open. He held, hands cracking and glimmering with power. Deimos lets a low growl slip from under his breath, seemingly larger and deeper than himself. Whoever opened that door was opening it into carnage.

The door splinters through and instantly the doorway was alight in a bright moonlight ray that scorched the eyes and skin of the poor soldiers who were expecting a sword point. The night vision they had pulled over their eyes from the dark hallway only made the blinding worse. “Go, Ranah.” He calls, shifting to prepare another spell after cutting his ray’s blast off short to allow Ranah to move in to fight. The blast was meant to be a surprise, not to suppress fire and give the enemy time to understand what’d just happened.

DEIMOS’S ROOM

Deimos would likely not have been aware that most of the soldiers in this country were half-starved boys fed communist propaganda, clothed in factory assembled uniforms and armed with AK’s. The magical light blinded and seared them, making them drop their weapons. Ranah capitalized on this and moved to toss their guns aside. By the time they recovered some of the staff who were hiding were now holding the weapons, while the remainder put up only token resistance.

“You should be ashamed to be part of this coup! I lost my parents to the first dictatorship!” the housekeeper, an elderly woman, scolded the boy soldiers, who at this point surrendered to the elderly staffers. Some were even crying.

“No! Traitor! You disobey the orders of the Grand General!” The squad leader, a well-fed adult and a full member of the Officer Corps, found his pistol sliced apart by a magical blade. “No. You betray our country! our people!” Ranah rebuked, and clocked him with a hook punch to the jaw.  

“This group is dealt with… but we are not out of the woods yet. We must stop that kangaroo trial!” She looked out the window, seeing some of the staff were being hauled before a table with seated officers. A military tribunal they call it. A band of murderers was what they were.

“Mom, dad. please stay here. I’ll come up with something… a plan to distract them…” She turned to their rescuer, who had proven capable. “…Can you help me with … We need to grab a ladder so we can… no we have to make sure my mom and dare are…” Ranah began to ramble, the anxiety getting to her.

“Help is here.” The minister simply said, looking up from his mobile device.

HOTEL GARDEN TURNED EXECUTION GROUNDS

The military was well prepared with their scripts, their justifications, and their cameras. They would hold ad-hoc military ‘court’ on site, then murder whom they wished, labelling their own people as rebels and terrorists. The staff were made to kneel, surrounded by armed soldiers, who were kept in tight check by their officers. A tribunal of five officers, their commander in the middle, presided as judge and jury; two black clad, helmeted individuals stood behind them, with only a faint number patch, standing quietly as the executioners.

A mock trial indeed. There were no lawyers, no defense, no proceedings. Only conviction with a gavel. “You are all accused  of rebellion and treason, for disobeying the military government, for harboring rebels. How do you plead?” He asked with a smirk. The sentence had already been passed.

“We will never have a dictatorship again. Ever.” The staff protested, defiant.

The elderly officer only smirked. They had rehearsed their scripts well, and felt fully justified in their actions. They would rule again. “Fools. We are the protectors of the people and of democracy. You are the rebels, and by military justice are all sentenced to death. Unit 06! Execute them all.”

The black figure moved forward, 06 on his shoulder. He conjured forth flames from his hands, and raised them to set the ‘criminals’ ablaze, their sentence being an agonizing death.

Suddenly, something smashed into the armored infantry transport in the garden, dropping from the sky and flattening the front end, capsizing it then landing on its side. The 06 looked at the IFV for a fraction of a second, then in an instant the clone metahuman’s head and brains was smeared all over a nearby modern art statue. A stainless-steel shotput ball had embedded itself into the statue, messily demolishing the pyrokinetic’s head. His headless body slumped to the ground spurting blood, his hands still twitching. Everyone looked on the sight, dumbfounded.

Another moment passes, and a second shotput had punched right through a suddenly empty chair, and into side of a car beside the military tribunal. The commanding officer could scarcely process what had happened just now, one moment he was in his seat, the next, he was standing in the open, the breath briefly taken out of his lungs, carried by the 04 Clone- the Speedster. He looked at the figure who had arrived.

He looked at the upstart that had interrupted them. “…Who are you?! HOW DARE YOU! I AM AN OFFICER OF THE LEGITIMATE MILITARY GOVERNMENT! I WILL HAVE YOU TORTURED FOR DAYS AND-”

Without a single word, Dragon Girl stepped into view. She was not in her normal american superhero costume- but in Korean Marines battle dress. She quickly scanned around to pick up on the obvious threats, as Dragon Fear gripped the normal human soldiers, paralyzing them with supernatural fear. She saw the 06 was very much dead, and the only other clone present was 04.

The other tribunal officers wisely packed it up, entered their private car and fled. Their commander managed to turn his fear into anger, and growled orders. “…No… no… no… no… no! You’re not supposed to be here! This is not the Korean Peninsula! 04! Kill her!” Despite knowing who he was dealing with, he still pulled out his handgun and started shooting. The Speedster moved in and hit Dragon Girl at high speed with a pair of batons, and surprisingly Dragon Girl was being beaten back with each blow. She seemed to be on the defensive, trying feebly to catch the speedster but failing to.

DEIMOS’S ROOM

“Okay. New plan. We help that one.” Ranah said, dumbfounded at the arrival of a new combatant. Ranah rappelled down the room’s balcony and onto the grounds, toward the fight between Dragon Girl and the Speedster.

((946))

He expected at least a few bullets to fly. He was amazed that not one of the soldiers had pulled the trigger at all, only to realize that the minister referring to the soldiers as misguided children wasn’t at all an anecdote. They literally were children, blinking off the bright light they’d just been exposed to. A pit of guilt formed in Deimos’s gut, only for it to be replaced with relief that he had opted for a less damaging effect. The children and the squad leader shouldn’t be permanently blinded, but it would take a while until they were seeing spots in their vision as if they’d looked directly at the sun.

However the next question of what to do had Deimos staring blankly at the rambling superhero. He understood what she’d wanted but the options of getting her family out of this hotel room alive was very slim. He might be bullet resistant when he had his scales, but all it took was one bullet when they were being peppered to hit the minister or Ranah or anyone else and it’d all be for naught. Luckily the breaking and entering has jarred the furniture stack off the balcony door enough where it could now be opened. “We’re in a defensible position here. I can keep them out of the building pretty reliably from the roof.” Deimos thinks out loud, beginning to wonder if the building’s roof could support a 14 ton beast of the sky.I may be able to scatter them off the trial. Can-”

Deimos did however stop his thinking once a shotputt managed to clobber off a guys head down below. “Oh shit.” The half dragon breathes, impressed. “Help is definitely here.” He calls as a woman in marine’s clothes shows up. There was something about her, both wildly exotic and wonderfully familiar but he couldn’t quite place it. The same aura that gripped humans with paralyzing fear, drew Deimos’s attention like a moth to a flame. “Go, Ranah. I’ll catch up. I need a few seconds.”

Turning to the hallway, Deimos works his way to the roof relatively quickly as his skin begins to crawl with draconic energy. A black sphere swallows him and expands, stars swirling along it’s surface as it seems to morph and mold into something else… into scales, horns and wings. Once the fight between the speedster and the dragon lady started Deimos had finished his transformation.

The prince of the night bounds to the edge of the building, front claws fracturing the concrete beneath him as his wings expand their full width, blocking the sun from the courtyard and seeming to engulf it in a starry night. His body blackened out by it’s own shadow only glowed along it’s wings and in his eyes… still brightly holding the rest of his blinding beam from earlier.

A loud, high pitched and trilling roar echoes from the regal dragon, demanding attention on him. The piercing roar seems to ring through, cloud, sky and perhaps through space. He turns to see a car full of officers fleeing the scene and lets out another, lower and angrier roar as his jaw of dagger-like teeth drops and sends a devastating ray out toward a street light up the road from where they were heading. The noise was a low rumble, as if it were fire from a high-pressure blow torch. It seared right through the iron and sent it crashing right into the car’s path.

Deimos didn’t linger on the car long enough to see if it’d crashed or if they had the sense to hit the brakes and find another route, rather he glares down into the courtyard, seeing another officer barking orders. His wings tuck into his sides as he flows over the side of the building as if he were lighter than air, reintroducing the sun to the courtyard and revealing that Deimos was not as pitch black as the shadows played him up to be. His scales on the top half of his body gleamed an obsidian color, reflecting a dark violet undertone as the sun caught the scales, however along his back remained illuminated, pulsing with a bright azure light. Once he landed, splintering the pavement beneath his feet, two things became more apparent.

One was that Deimos was not nearly as large as he appeared on the roof. He was likely 30 feet tall from the top of his head to his feet and his width was almost entirely attributed to the sheer wingspan he had to ensure easy flying. The other was that it was not the night sky that blotted out the sun, it was the swirling pattern at the underside of Deimos’s wings, which now were held loosely at his sides as assesses the situation before him.

Ranah didn’t know what she was doing, sprinting towards an incredibly dangerous metahuman – a speedster, one that clearly didn't hesitate to use lethal force. The new arrival was no longer so impressive, as she couldn’t react at all to the speedster’s movements, and worse she was beaten back and eventually fell down.

“Let… let her go!” Rana called out, though she dared not approach. She couldn’t possibly react to the speedster’s attacks. Instead she opened with materializing ice daggers from the nearby fountain and throw them at their enemy.

The speedster effortlessly dodges the icicles, seeing that they were moving at super slow motion to his perception. Confident that he was beating Dragon Girl, the speedster grabbed a hold of her head and began rapidly beating her into the pavement like a jackhammer. Dragon Girl’s face pulverized the concrete tiles. Rana readied another volley, when Deimos had climbed onto the roof and let out a mighty roar.

A dragon’s roar caught the speedster’s attention this time. "New threat detected!” The faceless, black clad metahuman paused his relentless attack, and in that instant, he’d made his mistake. He felt hands wrap around his knees. Dragon Girl exploited the opening to grab him, something she couldn’t do while he was alert.

“Pay attention.” She gasped. The speedster realized his fatal mistake, as now he could experience his legs being crushed. What should be an instant to anyone else, was minutes- hours of agony to his perception. He could feel his knees come together, he could feel the skin, ligaments and bones giving way, he would feel his blood vessels rupture, he would feel it all. He rushes to press a button on his suit, to dispense a drug into his system that would suppress his perception so he could reduce the pain.

“EYAAAAAARRRGH! MY LEGS! OH GOD MY LEGS!” He shouted in pain, tears streaming down his face. He gasped for air, and removed his helmet. Underneath was a young adult Asian male, bald, and in terror of Dragon Girl, whose hands were stained with his blood and bits of his kneecaps.

The agonizing screams made Dragon Girl pause. She wanted to finish him quickly. This speedster was a clone, ‘it’ was not her friend. It wasn’t. “…No! you’re not him! You’re not him.” She told herself over and over, but the clone spoke and cried like … Super Sonic Hiro.

“June… June… why…” He pleaded, his eyes fixed on Dragon Girl. Did this clone have Hiro’s personality? Or did the injury cause it to resurface?

The commanding officer looked on in horror. “06! 06! Where are you!” In the chaos he took a few moments to realize their pyrokinetic was long dead. He looked at the 04 unit, who Dragon Girl had just turned into a paraplegic. How could this have happened? The military paid a fortune, and two assets were taken out in minutes!

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, the old officer cut and ran, but slipped on some ice that Raya conjured. The local hero dragged him back, back to the people he was about to execute minutes ago. “You are a disgrace. A solder is supposed to protect his people, not oppress them! See what they’ll think of you now!”

The staff surrounded the high and mighty officer who lorded over them like a bloodthirsty god. Now he was a fat, arthritic old man in a unform he was too big for. He put his head to the ground. “Please …. Mercy…” They would have none for him. Feet and fists, oppressed for most of their life, exacted natural justice.

Ranah approached their rescuer with trepidation. She had proven her willingness to maim and kill. Only when things had calmed down did she recognize her. “You… you are dragon girl… The Dragon Girl of South Korea.” She looked in horror at the blood on her hands, and the legless speedster at her feet. “…Are you… are you going to kill him?” she asked, not knowing what to make of the situation. By her reputation, there was little she could do to stop her.

“I... I can't.” She simply blurted out, looking at the clone. She then looked over back at Deimos. Without his distraction, she wouldn’t have been able to do this. She waved at him to come over. The danger at the hotel had been stopped. For now.

((751))

Deimos’s armored fans twitched against the side of his neck at the smell of blood. Why did this woman smell so familiar, good even through the coppery stench of blood. Either way, there wasn’t much he could do in this form. He pulls his wings in front of himself as the darkness of his scales spreads into an inky black liquid sphere again. After close to 20 seconds the orb shrinks into Deimos’s silhouette and he unfurls his wings from around himself and folds them back to hug his spine.

His heart was still pounding with adrenaline. Pretending to be a commanding king of the sky was incredibly hard on the nerves. At least it seemed the better part of the danger was over as he followed Dragon Girl’s beckon…


Was she a real dragon? Was she like him?

Deimos’s mind lights with questions, things he wanted to ask her… however none of it made it’s way up his throat as he looked to the writhing and screaming speedster who was currently missing his legs.

He kneels to the speedster as the dragon lady refuses to kill him. “Stay still. I can help you. Just please don’t hit me.” He raises his hand as if to signal he wasn’t armed and that he was basically trusting an enemy not to try to kill him.

Deimos’s words turn to a language unheard, however was comprensible as speech of some kind. It was draconic as his hands began to glow and looked to be covered in a baby fine, metallic blue dust. She places his hands to the mans legs after pulling some of the missing pieces closer.

“You may not ever walk again. But you won’t die. And you won’t be in pain anymore.” His wounds begin to close… however bones did not regrow, nor did any pieces torn off his body reattach. Rather his body began to slowly heal as it was convenient. Wounds closed around broken bones and bleeding stopped.

“I’m Deimos. He needs a hospital. This spell works as speeding up the natural healing process. He’ll need a surgeon to clean it up for longevity but it’ll at least keep him alive so he can see jail.” Deimos knew he was in a dangerous position so close to the speedy metahuman. Sure his legs may be gone, but his arms were still there and he was fast. All he could do was trust that the man had some common decency not to try to speed punch the person who’d just kept him alive and getting rid of his pain.

After Deimos is satisfied with his work he sits the man up against the concrete wall. Wings fluttering against his back. This day kept getting wilder and wilder. However once the adrenaline died down he found conversation difficult to start. “I um… I’m just a tourist.” He starts a bit nervously, scratching the back of his head before realizing he’d just gotten blood in his hair. Gross. “I kinda woke up in a bath tub full of ice in this hotel about-” He checks his watch. “Half an hour ago. Where am I?”

“Thank you…” Once he received healing, Supersonic Hiro, or rather his clone, finally passed out from blood loss and exhaustion. He was too weak to resist and thus proved no threat when he received healing.  Dragon Girl went over to pick up his helmet, and looked it over. Ranah looked at her still confused, turning to Deimos first as he asked a question.

“…Okay, okay. Let’s get some things clear. You’re in the country of Jagarata. We are in the middle of a military coup… and we just save the people at this hotel, and my father the foreign minister.” Ranah expositioned Deimos as much as she could to bring him up to speed. “I’m afraid a hospital or jail is going to be difficult. They’ve probably taken over all the government services. I’ll work with what you’ve started and get to healing him too.”

Dragon Girl spent a few moments using her far less known ability of psychic technomancy to access the Clones’ communication network. Once she found out all she could, she turned to her new allies.

“Nice to meet you Deimos. I’m sorry you got mixed up in this mess. I'll help you sort things out but first we need to deal with the others. And thank you for healing it… him…the clone.” She said, great shame in her voice. She wanted to call him Hiro.

“Clone? What do you mean?” Ranah asked, wanting to know. Now that she felt comfortable enough around Dragon Girl, she started asking all the important questions. “…More importantly what are you doing here? Isn’t there a UN sanction against metahumans interfering with foreign affairs? I mean, I’m really, really grateful you showed up. But you’re being here is going to cause a lot of legal problems. And why did you kill that pyrokinetic but not the speedster? I mean… yeah she was going to burn those innocent people alive… and thank god… for ….” Ranah started talking faster and faster, as much as her mouth could follow her brain, until she gasped for air and stopped talking.

((357))

Deimos nods as he processes information. He was at least in the same country his parents took him to, which he honestly saw as a bad thing at the moment. If they were still in the country, their hotel could be going through something similar. He knew his father would definitely lay low and could convince his mother to do so, but he didn’t know any of their friends. For all he knows, one of them could have tried to play the hero and gotten everyone in a bull crap court like this one.

“Alright. My parents are in Jagarata as well. We went on vacation with some of my dad’s friends,they’re staying at some hotel called the Crowne Rose?” Deimos begins to think back to the last thing he remembered. That cup of taro tea was all he could remember. Seemed like after the last sip, everything blended into now. Then his mind went back to the absolutely putrid smell it gave off. He’d assumed it was a part of the tea but looking back on it he was beginning to recognize the smell from school. It reeked faintly of both Adderall and muscle relaxers… and the kid who gave it to him was a known drug user. Those little brats drugged their babysitter!!

“No problem, I- Others? Excuse me?” Deimos catches. There were more? He then spots the number this man was wearing. “Wait, clone!?” He backs up even further realizing this meant multiple clones with superpowers.

With another groan, Deimos just lowers his head. He really did get dragged into this, but this was to be expected.“It’s alright. I am just glad I woke up with both my kidneys this morning. But, I have to find my parents and a group of stupid american teenagers who think it’ll be great fun to slip their babysitter drugs to go have a good time in foreign night life.”

His eyes lift as Ranah begins another string of information. He let her go until she ran out of breath, looking around at the carnage. “Let’s cross legal problems when they arrive. What’s done is done, killing the other clone was kind of a necessity from the looks of it, saving this one was a luxury.” Deimos didn’t know anything about the EU or legalities regarding metahumans, all he knew was the longer this fiasco went on the more likely his parents were in danger.

“Let’s get him up into the hotel room. I stopped that car but I have a feeling we could see some trouble if we stay out here too long.” Deimos offers, pulling the speedster up with a bit of difficulty but manages to get the deadweight man balanced right. “There’s a squad of soldiers upstairs… if you can call them soldiers. We may be able to get some information out of them.”

Dragon Girl volunteered to speed things along, doubting the regular foot soldiers would know much. And with the people beating the officer to within an inch of his life, there’d be no interrogating him. “I know where the clones are, and they’re nowhere near the Crown Rose. It’s not near anywhere strategic either, and nobody important is there. But it is along the way.”

Rana looked at DG with surprise. She recalled her fiddling with the clone’s helmet. Was she actually doing some hacking? Was Dragon Girl also some kind of computer expert? “How do you know that? Internet is down around the country. Let me guess, you must have like, a ton of tech support. Like super classified stuff, you’d have to kill me and Deimos…” she tried to make a joke about it.

“Yes I do, and no I have no reason to hurt either of you.” Dragon Girl gave her a reprimanding glare. She then brought up a high tech holographic map of the city, as internet was now down. “What is this area? Two clones are holding their position here.”

Rana looked at the map a moment before recognizing it. “…That’s a special residential district where all the country’s metahumans’ families live.” She paused, thinking a moment. Then it dawned on her. “Gods! They’re holding them hostage so they don’t disobey the army.”

“I’m guessing the local superheroes don’t take kindly to having their families be used as hostages… Well Deimos, We can check in with your parents along the way. Then we go take away the military’s leverage. Give the people their power back.” Dragon Girl suggested with a firm confidence. She talked like she could end this coup before lunch time.

“We should bring Hiro- the clone- to a room. He can recover better inside.”

Ranah looked at the Korean heroine, and had been feeling a lot of regret since the clone started talking. Perhaps there was more layers to her than she thought. "You know what, I’ll talk to the soldiers here. Most of them are just kids, they should be with their families. You bring your friend… the clone… inside.”

DEIMOS’S ROOM

Dragon Girl could say nothing as they brought Hiro back to Deimos’s room. The foreign minister looked at Dragon Girl, Deimos, and now the clone. Being a senior official, he was more privy to the being they’d brought in. His wife, a Thai woman who’d not lived through military rule, averted her gaze at the legless metahuman.

“Good lord. Why is he still alive? I thought your mission was terminating these things.” He asked bluntly, referring to the clone again as an ‘it’. Dragon Girl had no response, but to put him at ease cuffed Hiro to the bed frame with ziplock handcuffs. "The uh... clone... exhibited a will, minister, he uh, voluntarily surrendered. I'm honor bound to accept surrender." She explained as much as she could.

As June fiddled with the cuffs, the clone began groaning and speaking in a half-delirious state. “…Dragon Girl… June why did you kill me… I thought you were my friend…” he really had to make it dark. DC universe dark.

Dragon Girl had no response to that. How could she? She couldn’t look this ‘thing’ in the eye, try as she did to kill him a few minutes ago. She could only turn around, turn her back on them all. She spoke to Deimos without looking at him. “…You… ready to go see your parents… or you got something to say?”

((608))

The half dragon gives a sigh of relief as Dragon Girl delivers the news his family’s position was safe for now. Now he only had to pray their decision making was solid. It hadn’t at all dawned on Deimos how she’d gotten this information until Ranah cracked an ill-timed joke. The map did, however, have him giving an impressed nod. Had to be some kind of spell, right? Either way the revelation of the army holding humans hostage to keep control of the metahumans down-right scared him. He knew his parents weren’t there before all this, but if they were discovered and moved there, this could all fall apart.

“Sounds like a good plan. Once the families are free, people can fight this a bit more freely.” Deimos agrees. He did have to admit, her confidence had him entirely invested in this. She apparently knew how to handle this, so he was more than content following her lead. He didn’t quite understand all the issues with the clone, he just assumed that since this was the clone there was a dilemma of what to refer to him as?

He carted the man up the stairs with the two women, settling him where Dragon Girl had asked. He watches as the dragon woman cuffs him to the bed, a move that Deimos understood but didn’t believe was entirely necessary. “I don’t think he can hurt you even if he wanted to, minister.” Voice trailing off to a bit of a shy trill he decided to drop the subject of mutilation. He wanted to ask about how Dragon Girl knew this man’s name was Hiro. Who was he? If he was a clone, was Hiro the original or did this one choose the name? His heart dropped into his stomach as he began to mumble about being killed.

“I do have many questions. But, none of them are any of my business or have any immediate importance, so I’ll hold onto them. He’s probably just delirious from the blood loss.” He excuses, choosing to bring it up at a later date. “Let’s go find my parents. Let me just grab my coat.” Deimos adds, opening the coat closet only for a dark figure to slump into the floor with a loud, dead weight, THUNK. It was a man in black military gear, his gun half-heartedly tossed into the corner of the closet. Deimos jumps about a foot in the air, wings stiffening out a bit in shock.

“What the f-” Deimos catches himself, taking a deep shaking breath as he turns the man over. His face was swollen with blisters, some of which had busted revealing burnt skin beneath as if hit with the most radical sunburn on the planet. All the skin exposed, his face, his hands, his arms, all of it blistered. A section in the middle of his nose had flesh so scorched it looked like it had literally melted away and the point of his cheek held exposed bone and muscle. And, worst of all his eyes were gone and spilling blood from empty sockets.

Deimos fell back in horror as the man only groaned, signaling he was still alive, but Deimos hadn’t heard him. “Oh my god. What- who is that!?” Deimos’s heart slammed through his ribs like a freight train.

“I-I I don’t remember anything from last night, I. Did I do that to him!?” He panics, laying flat on the floor trying to calm his breathing before he had a heart attack to add to the stress. “Did I murder someone in a drugged stupor in a foreign country!?” Only then did the man groan louder, twitching his fingers.

This only served to calm Deimos a mere modicum of what he was before. “Oh thank god, he’s still alive.” He breathes before realizing nausea was hitting him like a freight train, he stills just glad there wasn’t really anything in his stomach, or else it would be on this disgusting hotel floor.

The mood of the room shifted when Deimos’s drunken stupor victim rolled out of the cabinet.
Dragon Girl let out an audible snort, the smell of burnt flesh offending her heightened sense of smell. She almost wanted gagged. "A very loose definition of alive.” She was so distracted she had to activate her alien tech mask, nano-machine matter that built itself around her nose and mouth.

“I got him.” Raya channeled her healing powers using water from a waterskin on her pack. She focused a large amount of power on the man’s insides.
“I’m gonna… I’m gonna…” If the minister’s wife wasn’t already completely grossed out, she was now, emptying the contents of her stomach onto the floor. The minister himself was made of sterner stuff. He actually reached into the man’s burnt uniform, peeling it off his skin and reaching into a pocket. He retrieved some identification. “Military intelligence.” He remarked, showing it to them. “Major Zhau. I never liked you.” He said, disapprovingly.

Ranah’s healing was efficient enough that the man’s vocal cords were usable and he could breathe without assistance. “…Feeling… mutual…” He said in agreement.

“Well. I could always stop treating your wounds.” Ranah said, and the man groaned, reconsidering his stance.  

“…I heard that roar when you went outside mister Deimos. Now, it’s not my place to ask outsiders to interfere in local politics, but… our people have finally tasted democracy, and they do not want to let it go. Could you two… uhm…” He started, wondering how to phrase his request.

Dragon Girl shook her head. “You know that’s not why I’m here, minister. But… if the stronger clones are protecting the ‘Grand General’… then I suppose I’m hitting two birds with one stone.”  She had to be a bit indirect about it.

“Yes, I suppose that scenario would make it much easier for us to turn this coup around. It has to be us, the people, who take this nation back. We can never go back to a military dictatorship.”

((305))

Deimos’s hands would feel sweaty if he were capable of sweating. He gulps hard at the idea that he lit someone up with absolutely zero recollection of doing so. Sure, he permanently blinded a really bad person, but for all Deimos knows, this could have just as easily been a pizza boy or one of his dumb friends.

“Oh my god, am I going to go to jail for that?” Deimos thinks out loud, trying to keep his voice as cool and calm as it would usually be. The minister’s words only went right past him in the current situation. Deimos had never even come close to killing a person until today, this was so out of character for him.

‘Sir? We think you’d like to see this. ‘ A mousy man calls from the hallway. It was the hotel manager with a smartphone. He sits next to Deimos and pulls up the security footage from the camera in the hallway. The camera shows Major Zhau coming up one side of the hallway, and from the other is Deimos, carrying a bucket of ice.

Zhau wasted no time pointing the gun in the kid’s face, shouting at him asking him where the minister was. This however, was answered with a super charged blast of blinding and searing light, enhanced by the night. However the flash didn’t end, it just continued until Zhau finally threw his gun to the side almost 10 seconds later after firing into the wall. After that Deimos immediately falls back into the floor and the current hotel room door swings open and out saunters 4 very stoned and drunk teenagers. They whoop and holler, take some selfies and drag both Deimos and Zhau into the hotel room, and then make a ludicrous amount of trips to the ice machine before hauling the entire thing into the room with them and then leaving.

Deimos glances up to noise the ice machine pushed against the balcony wall. “Well… that explains some things. Will I go to jail for strangling some teenagers when I find them?” Deimos takes a deep breath, feeling a bit better about having burnt a man’s eyeballs out of his sockets. “Who points a gun in a random guy’s face, man?” He asks Zhau in a semi-irritated tone.

“I’ll help take out the meta-humans keeping your heroes down. Any revolution you must make is in your own hands.” Choosing to keep his own stance aligned with Dragon Girl’s. She seemed to know how to handle these types of affairs better than he did.

“Lets go find my parents. I can fly us there.” He offers, although she did seem to get there incredibly fast. Perhaps she didn’t need a magic dragon ride? Or could she fly too?

“…You’ll be taken out back and shot… by the military court.” She patted Deimos and gave him a wry smile.

Dragon Girl looked at the footage herself and made a subtle frown. “You need better friends, Deimos.” She remarked.

Once they had decided their next course of action, they return to the garden. The offer of flying was welcome but politely declined. “I’m good. Give me a second.” DG again brought up a holographic keyboard on her arm. Once she input some commands, her wardrobe began to change, as the nanite armor assembled itself around her from its storage... somewhere.  

Scales of dull gray nano-matter covered her in seconds, which quickly morphed into a sleek, glossy black, even her face concealed under a face fitting transparent mask, which flickered to opaque black, with sunken eye sockets and no mouth. She looked like the bad guy. A very cool bad guy.

Once she was in ‘incognito’ mode, Dragon Girl turned to their local guide. Her voice was now under machine distortion, making Dragon Girl’s voice near unrecognizable. “Ranah. You need a lift?” she asked, checking if their guide needed assistance.

“Cloak of wings! I’m fine.” Ranah said cheerfully, patting her cloak. Flying was always exciting. “It’ll give us a good view of the rest of the city.”

“Good. Let’s drop by the hotel. Then the subdivision. This direction. It’s by the river, can’t miss it.” Dragon Girl breaks into a sprint, crossing the hotel’s garden in a few strides. Then she hits the road with an asphalt crushing step, launching herself into the air like a projectile. Her take off sent quite an amount of dust into the air, and a mild shockwave that could be felt in one’s chest.

“… Holy! She’ll definitely get there first.” Ranah couldn’t contain her impressed smile at the Hulk Leap. She gestured Deimos to follow, her cloak transforming into a set of dragon fly wings, rapidly buzzing and lifting her into the sky, though in comparison her flight was calm.

The sight from above though, was anything but serene. Military Police roamed the streets with batons and riot shields, squaring off against angry mobs. In other places, people fled from army units supported by tanks. The sound of machine gun fire could be heard off in the distance. Ranah’s flight was slowed by all the terrible things they could see from up here. While they had a mission, the people needed help on the ground as well. And the local heroes certainly can’t lift a finger yet.

On the street directly below Deimos, a gathered mob was fleeing as an APC came into view, supported by soldiers armed for war. Ranah looked on with deep concern, like she wanted to do something about it.

((474))

Deimos felt his heart drop out into his stomach at the assertion he could be shot for this. However, it took a second for him to realize that was a joke...probably. Please be a joke.

“They’re not my friends. They’re my parent’s friend’s kids. I was supposed to be babysitting them, but I suppose Taro Tea isn’t supposed to smell faintly of a narcotic cocktail, is it?”

Deimos shakes his head, holding down the anger he held in the moment. What would they had done if they accidentally killed him? They gave him both an upper and a downer and that was only the immediate drugs Deimos could remember the smell of off the top of his head. He felt stupid for not recognizing the smell was in the tea and wasn’t radiating of the drug dealing yuppie.

As Dragon Girl and Ranah get situated, Deimos choses to transform on the balcony to avoid taking the ceiling off the place. Just as the liquid shadows form to scales, Deimos folds his wings against his back, clinging to the relatively tiny ledge.

His horn-crowned head watched in mild alarm as Dragon Girl seemed content with casually smiling at gravity’s demands and laughing in the concrete’s face as she landed. He gives a low, rumbling trill, armored fans twitching against the pulse point in his throat. Deimos’s wings spread, pulling him into the air with a gentle leap off the ledge. His wingspan was massive in comparison to the width of his body, making flight both silent and easy as his wings swallowed the air beneath them.

He soars up a bit higher and stops, secondary wingset descending to take the weight off him as he hovered. When the main set was down, the secondary was up and vice versa, giving him the extra thrust he needed to stay aloft.  He follows Dragon Girl, secondary wingset tucking up under his main wings as a soared somewhat leisurely behind her, only having to beat his wings every so often once they caught the wind beneath them.

However, the sights filled him with rage. Tanks and automatic weapons against unarmed civilians? That was hardly fair at all. The dragon lets out a low trill to his companions, rumbling like a deep growl behind his heart. A rumble of war as the scales along his back begin to glow in a cascade.

With that he climbs, disappearing into the clouds above in an instant… and all was quiet for what seemed like hours.

In an instant the clouds parted, giving way to a dragon in full dive right above the APC, so quickly he was upon them before it could get it’s turret up at him. His spine alight and jaws crackling with so much energy it streaked the sky behind him as his wings snap out to catch him. He stops only ten feet above the APC, opening his jaw and unleashing a azure torrent of starfire onto the military vehicle, so bright it lit up like a second sun in the dim morning light. It took mere seconds for the APC to split, tires and screws flying in every direction as Deimos moves down the line to each subsequent tank. His aim swerved around civilian vehicles, but veered back into tanks and APCS well enough. The longer the beam of blinding light lasted, the faster it seemed to sear through tanks until it faded. An entire streets worth of tanks, seared through in half as Deimos ascends into the sky once more, silently, gone.

Deimos chooses to be satisfied with the panic he’d caused rather than risk another dive. Besides, he needed to recharge before doing it again and it was still daylight, so that could take some time. He soars back, just ahead of Dragon Girl, soaring a bit lower below the clouds, giving a snort of air and drifting back up into the clouds, choosing to remain more hidden in their cover after having just obliterated around six vehicles and leaving military ranks scrambling in case he returned.